2015 breach level index: Gemalto release first half findings.

Gemalto have released the findings of the Breach Level Index for the first six months of 2015, revealing that 888 data breaches occurred, compromising 246 million records worldwide.

Compared to the first half of 2014, data breaches increased by 10% while the number of compromised data records declined by 41 % during the first six months of this year. This decline in compromised records can most likely be attributed to that fact that fewer large scale mega breaches have occurred in the retail industry compared to the same period last year.

Despite the decrease in the number of compromised records, large data breaches continued to expose massive amounts of personal information and identities. The largest breach in the first half of 2015--which scored a 10 in terms of severity on the Breach Level Index--was an identity theft attack on Anthem Insurance that exposed 78.8 million records, representing almost a third (32%) of the total data records stolen in the first six months of 2015. Other notable breaches during this analysis period included a 21-million-record breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (BLI: 9.7); a 50-million-record breach at Turkey's General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs (BLI: 9.3); and a 20-million-record breach at Russia's Topface (BLI: 9.2). In fact, the top 10 breaches accounted for 81.4% of all compromised records.

"What we're continuing to see is a large ROI for hackers with sophisticated attacks that expose massive amounts data records. Cyber criminals are still getting away with big and very valuable data sets. For instance, the average healthcare data breach in the first half of 2015 netted more than 450,000 data records, which is an increase of 200 percent compared to the same time last year," said Jason Hart, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Protection at Gemalto.

Data Breaches by Source

The number of state-sponsored attacks accounted for just 2% of data breach incidents, but the number of records compromised as a result of those attacks totalled 41% of all records exposed, due to the breaches at Anthem Insurance and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. While none of the top 10 breaches from first half of 2014 were caused by state-sponsored attacks, three of the top ten this year were state sponsored--including the top two.

At the same time, malicious outsiders were the leading source of data breaches in the first half of 2015, accounting for 546 or 62% of...